tag archive for paris

côte d’azur

silver screen

woke up saturday morning, gleeful to be naturally waking rather than by my mobile cell phone [still haven't gotten an alarm clock, natch!]. opening my eyes, i came to the realization that the madness isn’t quite over yet. although two visitors from london had just departed, and two more long-lost friends were on their way… and, i still have tons of unpacking to do, furniture to buy, paint to slather.

looking out the window, i saw a shockingly bright sun smiling at me, so i did what any normal vampire would do… i slinked off to the cinema for a matinĂ©e.

côte d’azur was a cute, satisfying french film. one of those great films where the characters’ secret lives intertwine, resulting in a giant love-quadrangle between mom and dad and gay lover and daughter and son and straight boyfriend and… you get the idea.

life has been so rampantly plugged in for me the past few weeks, it was very satisfying to sit in a dark cinema by myself, munching sloppily on popcorn, slurping loudly on my diet coke, and laughing way too loudly. it was just what i needed—there’s sometimes no greater joy than being anonymous, being invisible, being unreachable.

my mind wandered twice during the film… each time for quite a few minutes. the film was very vividly set in côte d’azur, a gorgeous coastal village in the french riviera, and most of the film involved this very french family frolicking as only the europeans know how… singing, dancing, picnicking, sunbathing nude and riding around on bicycles.

the first time my mind wandered was right at the start of the film, as the dialog began, and the subtitles popped up on screen. listening to them speak french, and noticing how obviously french the men in the film all looked, i was immediately reminded of micha, the lovely french lad who seduced me—through this very blog—just some four months earlier.

i didn’t really talk here about our rapid courtship and romance and long-distance love affair—much. out of the blue, this talldarkandhandsome lad starts sending me cryptic flirtatious messages from paris, saying how much he adores me and my blog, next thing i know, i’m blindsided with stereotypical, storybook parisian romance, feeding each other macaroons in a park in some arrondissement one afternoon, and later climbing up the steps of monument in london just a few days later.

we knew from the beginning that i was leaving london, leaving europe, taking a one-way rocketship to planet california. that’s not to say i didn’t open up my heart to him, and he, his to me, and it’s not to say that he’s not missed. this french film definitely took me back to that afternoon in paris, his oh-so-slight accent, and the very french way he chain smoked.

just shortly after this little daydream, still only a few minutes into the film, my mind wandered again… on screen the family were taking a break from getting their summer house ready, and setting up outside for a very european lunch. crusty bread, meats and cheeses, wine and bottle d water. all the while, bugs flying around and the waves crashing just within earshot.

the scene was entirely too familiar, and took me back to my two very formative summers in germany when i was a teen—in particular that first summer in rural east germany, camping for weeks at a time in a out-of-the-way park on the lake. sitting around plastic picnic tables, just like the film, relaxing and laughing and smearing cheese on crusty bread.

i spent that summer sending awkward postcards to my girlfriend, thousands of miles away in indiana, whilst spending 18 hours a day frolicking with my friends. a mixture of adolescent hormones and platonic friendship, die jünge [the boys] and i spent sunup to sundown swimming and cycling and playing pool and cards and volleyball, and most evenings drinking and laughing. my german was always better after a few cans of lager.

in the same way that your mind needs r.e.m. sleep to organize itself and your memories, i think my brain took advantage of these moments of downtime in the dark cinema to catch up with the crazy pace my life’s been leading… and to reconcile the different segmented versions of eric that have been traipsing around the world.

how very hollywood of me to seek refuge in a cinema, and for film to provide therapy?

7 years, 8 months ago
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4,695,000 words

in preparation for my move, i’ve scanned in some of the remaining physical, printed photos i’ve been hauling around for years, and have dumped them all into my extensive online photo album [4695 photos]. they’re all pretty ancient, and you can see me at my adolescent best… shiny forehead, crazy hairstyles, and an extensive wardrobe of depeche mode t-shirts and jean shorts. hott!

eric's first visit to london

first we have my tour of england and scotland on a highschool trip when i was 16. sherry and i got lumped together with a bunch of yokels from texas, but they ended up being a hoot. i got drunk off of baileys in scotland, and fell in love with geraldo, the sensitive piano player from san antonio. we stayed in touch for years, until he became a priest.

mom's care package from america

the most significant cache of memoribilia is the slew of pictures from my life-defining stay in brandenburg, germany as an exchange student. these pictures bring back so many memories… my first encounter with foreign culture, my world shrinking and my head exploding as i realize that the rest of the world doesn’t operate like america, and my tiny 15yo mind feeling so incredibly naive. struggling to communicate at first, camping with the boys, weird horse festivals and nude swimming up north, visits to the extended family, my first disco, and so many laughs at home. oh—and shoveling all that coal.

lars at the rostock festival

i can’t really say if i was in love with my german host brother lars, or if discovering my sexuality just happened to coincide with the summer we shared a bed. there’s really no juicy gossip or innuendo here, i promise you. just two lads sharing accommodation for a pubescent summer. the photos don’t lie!

home run

after my trip to germany, we had a different exchange student come stay with us, during my final year of highschool. his name was mike, and he was stunningly intelligent and brilliantly cute. we took him to baseball games, amusement parks and to wal*mart.

kassel river

when i visited him the following summer, his posh family took me to fancy restaurants, amsterdam, and let us have a lads-only camping holiday in zaandvoort. an awakening of my global soul.

and again

lastly, there are plenty of photos from 1998, when i got burnt out during my 3rd year at caltech, and escaped, fleeing first to paris for a few weeks, then onwards to my first residency in london, sharing a house with seven insane south africans in bethnal green. my short visit, on a student work permit was the appetizer which whet my appetite for london living.

oh, i’ve also created a few video walkthroughs of my flat in vauxhall, so that when i get nostalgic in los angeles and can dial these up and laugh. ha! look how small that washing machine is! or man, did i live in the nasty nasty ghetto! this assumes, of course, that wherever i end up in l.a. will have a huge washing machine and will be miles away from the ghetto. likely?

7 years, 11 months ago
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mind the closing doors

mind the closing doors

the above photo does a decent job of encapsulating what summer in london means to me… commuting into town to meet up with friends for drinking sessions around soho, zipping out to friend’s parties in zone 4 and beyond [not .beyond], waking up in the morning afternoon, having a cup of tea with a stranger and then trying to find your to the nearest rail station to make your way home, or more likely, meet your mates for another late-afternoon brunch.

this bank holiday weekend was the beginning of my bittersweet departure, and of course london snapped instantly into summer mode, just to taunt me and tease me, showing me what i’ll be missing. but, after running into long-lost friends and exes, it’s become abundantly clear to me that, although the years zip by, london will always be here, london summers will always astound, and these same smiling faces [more-or-less] will always be here for me to bump into on the streets.

the love is starting to pour in from my peeps. there are different kinds of love one receives when making a grand departure…

sad love: this is the love you receive from your greatest, closest friends. friends whose lives i affect as much as they affect mine. the people who really don’t want me to leave, even if it’s for the best.

smiling love: these are the pleasant goodbyes, the friendly hugs. these are from my extended circle of friends and acquaintances and exes, who may be sad to see me go, but know that i’ll be back to visit, and are already licking their chops at an excuse to visit los angeles.

romantic love: ignore my previous post about losing my mojo… in the past few days, my heart has been pulled and pushed and wrung and stomped on and is now in a very fickle state. running into long-lost loves, contemplating new romances… everybody seems to want a piece of eric now that he’s leaving. everyone wants what they can’t have.

i’ve entertained friends visiting from new york and paris in the past week, and mumsy is arriving in less than 24 hours. i have lists of lists of to-do lists, my email inbox is overflowing, my mobile has some 80 messages in its inbox [which is normally empty], and i feel like a nap, although i’ve just woken up.

if i stay busy enough, i won’t have to think about the enormity of what saying goodbye really means.

7 years, 11 months ago
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didn’t even notice the dog poo

i didn't fly

the eurostar train pulled into gare du nord a bit ahead of schedule, robbing me of the minutes i needed to freshen up, faff the hair and mentally prepare for what was about to happen. stepping onto the platform, i felt only a tiny portion of the excitement one feels when stepping off an aircraft into a foreign land… my two hour train journey lacked the boarding rituals, the pressurized cabin, the stringent immigration checks, the jetlag that flying abroad presents.

looking up through the glass ceiling of the station, i saw a bright sunny spring day in paris, a welcome change from the bleak dreary london morning i’d just left. bleak, in no small part, due to my staying awake all night, letting the allure of london clubland evoke the vampire within. as i left .beyond at 7am to catch my train, after 8 hours of slamdancing, i chugged my third consecutive vodka + red bull, rationalizing it as the perfect way to start the morning of this exciting day.

walking down the platform, it really didn’t feel like i was in a foreign country. it felt like i had just stepped off the tube in some fictional zone 17. the pigeons looked the same. the air smelled the same. i didn’t feel jetlagged [although i had been awake for 24 hours at this point].

you can see here, of course, that i’m procrastinating in telling my story. i’m withholding the juice [le jus] the meat [la viande] of my tale. that’s because it’s all recursive… me blogging about meeting a boy, who i met through this blog. knowing he’s gonna read it, and more significantly, knowing now is the first time i’m letting myself contemplate the past 24 hours. oh, sod it…

the walk to the end of the platform seemed to take an eternity, which was just enough time for me to contemplate all of the 177 ways in which things would go horribly wrong. maybe we wouldn’t recognize each other? maybe he’d think i’m ugly? maybe i wouldn’t be able to understand his accent? maybe he’d be a foot taller than me? maybe he’d stand me up? maybe he looked nothing like his photos?

then i spotted him, dressed in a red jumper, smiling, bright-eyed and hiding his nervousness well. we had already agreed on some sort of internet stalker/stalkee greeting protocol, but i couldn’t remember [handshake? hug?] and just had to give him a quick kiss and a big hug. he was tall, much taller than i’d thought. and cute.

i felt at ease within minutes, strolling alongside him, smiling, laughing, bumping into each other as we walked down the street boulevard. most people would think meeting an internet date in paris spur-of-the-moment is kind of insane or dangerous or silly, but to me, what was insane was the flurry of emails and phone calls we’d exchanged in the past few weeks, full of contemplations and what if scenarios. this made sense, this was logical. my time in london is ticking away, let’s see if this boy who loves my blog will love the real me?

the sun was shining, birds chirping, and the city seemed so deliciously tranquil and relaxed compared to london. we started off with a japanese lunch of slurping udon and nibbling dumplings, laughing and smiling, still, at the preposterousness of what we were doing. the japanese waitress stopped by to compliment micha [in french] on how good his english was.

royal palace

from the 10th to the 2nd to the 1st to the 6th arrondissements, micha took me on a perfect tour of paris. through parks, palaces, cafĂ©s and churches. sitting by the fountain, we joked a bit about how we met, and tried to establish precisely how nervous each of us were. i felt flattered as he took me to his favorite cafĂ©, a bustling, elegant affair, with beautiful people and yelping poodles and a very friendly, smoky, loungey atmosphere. he pointed out a few french celebrities to me, knowing that i wouldn’t really be impressed.

that’s the kicker, of course. he, presumably, knows just about everything about me. well, not everything, but enough initial fodder to make our first rendezvous a bit lopsided. every lie i want to trick him with, every story i want to tell in an exaggerated way, every rehearsed secret i want to selflessly share, i have to reference, back-check, reverse-file and see if i had already blogged it, here.

how very 2005, how very i-generation, non?

it wasn’t until he tiptoed to the toilet, and the waiter stopped by, mumbling something to me in french, that it hit me that i truly am in a foreign country, having an incredibly foreign experience. i’m a global soul, but that doesn’t prevent me from being self-conscious that the french despise non-french-speaking american tourists. c’est la vie?

i found it tough to ignore the chemistry. my past few years in london have eroded my sense of romance, of flirtation without immediate sex. it sounds pathetic, and i’m not proud of it, but it’s the modus operandi of most london lads. this was the opposite of a quick pull in a smoky club. after weeks [well, a week-and-a-half] of getting to know so much, so quickly about this charming lad, online, to be sat in a parisian cafĂ©, laughing over coffee and tea, knees touching, with the occasional comfortable silence—well, it created a very thick, very electric atmosphere for me, unlike anything i’d felt in a long while.

after the cafĂ©, we strolled through streets lined with boutiques [with ugly women's fashion, but what do i know] and bookshops and art galleries. micha was doing a brilliant job presenting a very stereotypical, beautiful, bohemian version of paris, and i was gobbling it up. we picked up some macaroons from pierre hermĂ©, the most glamorous and decadent bakery i’d ever been too.

a park
don’t sit on the grass!

sitting in another park, slouching in some chairs, i bit into his pistachio/sour cherry macaroon as he sampled my 16-kinds-of-chocolate one. really, with no exaggeration, one of the tastiest, my delicate treats to ever hit my tongue. just sitting there, crumbs on our lips, the sun just beginning to think about setting, looking across this peaceful park, getting to know and feel even more comfortable with this romantic, exotic boy sat next to me… such the antithesis of my fast-paced, noisy, grimy, chew-em-up, spit-em-out london existence of the past few years.

as the afternoon progressed, i couldn’t stop noticing how this boy is more than the sum of his parts. half-german, half-french, i was able to pick out individual mannerisms, characteristics, body features that i could lump into one stereotype or the other. but underneath it all, there was much more. behind those eyes, a soul very different from myself, but also very complimentary to my own.

because he had stalked contacted me, because he already knows so much of my sordid past and yet still wanted to meet me, i was able to let my guard down and be probably a lot more honest and open than i normally would be with a [technically] total stranger. and, for this same reason, we both comfortably discussed all of the ways in which we’re incredibly, incredibly different.

we concluded our afternoon with a few sips of chilled kir, and a few martinis at les Ă©diteurs, where i fought every urge to smooch him across the table. after the third or fourth time of him nagging we really should get going!, i finally relented and let him take me to the station.

around the departures area were a smattering of couples playing tonsil hockey romantically saying goodbye. hugs, kisses, embraces. gays and straights, lesbians.

and one blogger and his stalker, off to the side, smiling and laughing, and sharing one last kiss.

8 years ago
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boring bitty bits

the sprinter

the usual recipe for my evijhserf postings is as follows:

  1. compile only the most glamorous and exciting bits of my otherwise mundane life
  2. carefully craft and spin descriptions of these bits into technically-truthful but generally pretentious-sounding posts
  3. throw in a bit of self-deprecation to try to prevent animosity, feign humility and encourage believability

i’ve had a very long bank holiday weekend just, and, for just one post, i’ll leave out all of the exiting bits, and only mention the sucky boring bitty bits of the past few days. hope you’re happy, you naysayers.

boy and booze

woke up thursday with a horrible hangover. switching on my mobile, i receive the following text:

ok. good night. i go to bed now. x.

hmmm… mysterious. i search through my sent messages, and see that i sent a whole flurry of texts between 310am and 345am, presumably on the night bus home from .heaven. flirtatious but drunkenly misspelled, and mostly unreciprocated messages, like, but i can mafe you breakfst! and your seem like a relly lovly lad and i’m not donne with you yet!. i’m so smooth. his number is saved in my addressbook simply as Boy. i think he was russian? sort of tall? i think? i remember his friend looking me up and down outside the club and stepping in, going nuh-uh, you’re not going home with him!

black and blue

spent most of thursday spending entirely too much time and entirely too much money in the company of a cute, straight, and entirely too camp hairdresser. the plan was to get my brown curls straightened into a floppy moppy doo. what handsome petro sweet-talked me into instead were several hours of bleaching, dying, unreciprocated flirting and uncomfortable chatting with the old ladies getting perms. he somehow convinced me to dye my hair black [with blue tint]. after hours of dying, he washes it out and exclaims, we’re not in kansas any more, toto!. indeed. he did a brilliant job, sure, but i walked out hating it. i’m blond, dammit, inside and out. i looked like a cross between a greasy elvis and an overly-processed kelly osbourne.

bears and prudes

friday evening, .greg and i schlep all the way up to .popstarz to pogo to some indie and sweat to some r’n'b. perhaps i’ve gotten older in the last 4 years, perhaps i was just grumpy from having elvis hair, but it just wasn’t like the old days.

i ran into tufty, the closest thing i’ve ever had to an internet date. we started flirting years ago on out, chatting online, chatting on the phone. even though we lived 60 seconds down the road from one another in finsbury park, we never hooked up. even now, years later, we flirt, and sometimes kiss, but nothing ever comes of it. tonight was no different… i sit next to tufty, looking handsome as ever, and tell him i’m leaving london soon. he says, well, maybe we should have a date, then?. reaches his hand up my shirt, only to tell me, sorry, you’re not hairy enough… i’m sorta into bears at the moment.

atif and some of .greg’s friends show up, and we’re all goofing off in the main room to some white stripes and some of gwen stefani’s stinky bananas, when i spot a lad giving me the eye. tall, black hair, blue eyes, bit of scruff, sheepish smile. a few minutes later, we’re upstairs having a drink and a gentle kiss. we play the age game. he guesses i’m 23. nope—28. he seems grossed out. i guess that he’s 22. nope—only 18. now i’m a bit freaked out. this is worse than tom cruise and katie holmes.

he seems nice enough, and i do like the innocent type. i couldn’t have been more wrong. moments later he’s dragging me to the toilets. ummm… what are we doing? he has an evil grin on his face. sorry, i’m not going to do this. not here, not now. he looks nonplussed. your loss, he tells me, i’ve got to get back to my friends. i spot him on the dancefloor later, and his 17yo girlfriends all give me dirty looks. hot.

kylie and who?

unlike 99% of the gay population of the world, and unlike 80% of the straight population of england, i’m not a kylie minogue fan. but, i recognize and respect her phenomenon, and bravely agreed to go with atif to see her do her thang at earls court on saturday. first hour: fun, fast songs i recognized accompanied by hot acrobatic go-go dancers showering on stage. second hour: boring, slow songs that all seemed the same, accompanied by hot acrobatic go-go dancers simulating sex with each other. i felt dirrrty. but worse, i found myself yawning as all the fat bald men and women around me clapped off-tempo and hooted/yodeled.

oh, and i got a phone call from Boy from wednesday night. turns out he’s not russian but french, his name is matthew, and he’s busy all weekend, because his boyfriend is visiting from paris. who are you and why are you calling me? thanks for playing…

scheduling fool

my friends generally respect me as a ringleader but at the same time are reluctant to try new things. it took a fair bit of cajoling to get wes, .greg, mitch and atif to head all the way down to london bridge late saturday to check out the opening of a new electro night called kosmetic surgery. i made vague promises of it being polysexual and being on the guestlist.

eventually we find the place, queue, and tiptoe in. we each get thoroughly, thoroughly stripsearched, only to find a smoky club filled with pink-cheeked lager lads dancing to drum’n'bass. we leave, disappointed and confused, and expensively barhop around late-night soho before sadly settling for trash palace, where we get sweaty dancing to rolling stones and depeche mode with some freaky freaks till 3am.

it’s not till the next day that i realize that we were 1 week early for kosmetic surgery. i’m such an idiot sometimes.

bleach plus two

woke up sunday disgusted by my hair, and took matters into my own hands. after one bleaching, i was left with an orange and brown leopard pattern. after the second bleaching, i was left with a pink scalp and a super-ginger orange doo. and after three bleachings, i’m left with a bright yellow afro and a bit of chemical burns on my neck. walked down to kennington gardens to meet up .greg and oliver and bob and marky and about 666 balding, gurning drug-fucked members of the vauxhall royalty. was great to see the boys, of course, but eventually the zips and zings flowing from the sharp-tongued gobs of my so-called friends got to me.

step 3 of 4

retreating back to my flat, i find two lost puppies hovering outside my door. one, my lovely portugese boyfriend mario, the other, a shockingly-tall stunningly-fit german lad named uli. after inviting them in, we sit in the sunny lounge and sip some drinks. it takes oblivious eric a good 10 minutes to understand what exactly is about to happen. i blush, smile, and then blush a little bit more.

oh, wait, there i go alluding to fabulousness, courting disdain and forgetting the self-deprecation. i’m not very good at this humility thing. at least i can rhyme.

8 years ago
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random pairings

on average, i probably am introduced to 10-20 new people each week… be it a colleague visiting from the paris office, a friend’s new boyfriend-of-the-moment, or a sexy shirtless lad on the dancefloor at 613am. often, these introductions are immediately disposable—both parties know we’ll never cross paths again. but, sometimes you will see each other again.

i have no idea how many unique name/face combinations are stored in the neurons of my cerebellum, i really don’t. lately, though, i’ve noticed my mind playing a very devilish but crafty trick on me—it’s started to combine similar personality records into the same file in my brain.

—

hooman/steve m: steve m was the very outgoing, very charming president of my student house at caltech. always cool, always charming, self-deprecating and a good friend. half-egyptian. hooman dragged me to burning man for the first time in 2000. intelligent, insightful and iranian in background, our friendship has survived years of ups and downs.

when hooman came to visit me in london a few weeks ago, we spent hours catching up on old times, as long-lost friends do. rooting around in my dusty attic of a brain, i kept coming up with memories from both sets of friends—i wanted to remind hooman of those times we walked around campus late at night, of those ridiculous skits we had to do a frosh camp, i wanted to joke about judy and maria and laura.

—

mike/torsten: a year after i was an exchange student to germany when i was 15, my family decided to host someone in indiana, in return. tall, lanky, blond mike came from a fairly affluent background in kassel, but did his best to slum it in white trash suburbia [indiana]. over the years, we visited each other quite a bit, our last visit in 1999, when i visited him at med school in hamburg, when i finally came out to him. he laughed, saying he’s known for a while, and as we platonically crawled into bed together, he kept laughing, suddenly remembering all the times i’d flirt with him—sharing my bed at home when i was 16, that time we went camping in the netherlands.

not to toot my own horn [haven't been able to do that since i was 15], i do fancy myself as being in the elite gay mafia bloggerati. i sympathize, admire, adore and feel brotherly love towards certain gay bloggers around the world… boys who really do get it, comrades like jerwin and darian and ernie and of course kevin… younger, more brazen and still making their own mistakes as they unravel the mysteries of gay life, unlike the established guard of gay blog elders [sorry!], like joe, mike, andy and others. i can’t even recall how i first came in contact with torsten, but i remember our first frantic meeting quite well… two years ago, in front of the main stage at europride in manchester.

we had cyberstalked each other online, of course, and therefore knew a surprisingly lot about each other. but, even after just a few minutes, i found myself feeling way too familiar with torsten… this cute, lanky german lad was picking up the pieces of my severed friendship with long-lost mike. sounds a bit psycho, i know, but my mind works in mysterious ways. of course, torsten and my friendship has evolved over the years, but i do feel myself crushing on him in the same unattainable way as straight mike all those years ago.

—

mani/mario: passionate, possessive, romantic and really good in bed—what they say about latin lovers is absolutely true. dating mani [short for manuel] a year ago started out [as most relationships do] as pure bliss… romantic dinners overlooking the harbor next to his flat, fun strolls around town, hot hot sex. not to mention the look on my friend’s faces when they first met him—my god he’s handsome. but, things got very heavy, very weird, very quickly. probably more my fault than his, i just couldn’t handle the possessiveness, the pressure, the velocity that he was taking our relationship. after our second date, saying my mom wants to meet you and adopting a pet name for me in spanish, which i later found out meant fiancĂ©.

mario, this hot portugese lad that i drunkenly text at 4am, feels very much like mani, the sequel. charming, romantic, quite the gentleman and dead sexy. a few weeks ago i spent an amazing sunday at his huge flat, chilling out in his hot tub, swimming in his pool, and sharing a blissful moment looking out over the thames, looking through the london eye at big ben, cuddling on an eerily high-resolution clear crisp night. in his eyes, in his embrace i can tell he wants more. which, for some reason, i can’t offer. it’s all good, it’s all casual, except for the occasional bitchy angry email/text from him, where he misinterprets my intentions or misunderstands my english sarcasm.

—

doug/ben: when i met doug just before valentines day, there was a unique spark about him that got more than just my heart racing… a geeky intellectualism that i rarely come across in london, a city filled with transients and foreigners and people more interested in getting pissed than getting into a debate about something nonsensical and intellectual. working towards his phd at the young age of 22, he’s a delicious combination of boyish good looks and an adult mentality. sweet as punch, sexy and very much into me.

from a distance, if you squint your eyes just so, you’d mistake him for ben, my last substantial boyfriend. not just in the looks department, but also in the way they both would stare across the table in a restaurant and make me blush, both in the way they don’t think twice about holding hands in public, both in the way they get a bit shy around my friends.

where things went wrong with ben, i don’t think i’ll ever know. but, as things evolve with doug, that bizarre filing system inside my head is already trying to push him into the same category as ben… trying, already, to create a checklist of all the reasons why it’s doomed to not work. guessing at ways in which i’ll muck it all up [cheat on him? be rude to him? start avoid him? force him to hate me?] even though there’s no logic behind any of it.

—

i reckon that all of our brains do this subconscious categorization. you’ve probably subconsciously categorized colleagues at the office and people on the bus and girls at dinner parties and guys at the gym. for me, though, these pairings seem to allow me to pick up, resume previously abandoned relationships. they allow me to relieve myself from the guilt, the openendedness of lost friendships, of unresolved relationships.

8 years, 2 months ago
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maybe it does?

ladies and gentleman, mister martin l gore

i’ve been dwelling a bit on my recent, unexpected reunion with irish brian [see below]… i also spent yesterday evening rocking out to the depeche mode: one night in paris live concert dvd from their exciter tour a few years ago [which i saw in san francisco, san josĂ©, manchester and london, thank you very much]. the set list for each show on the tour was identical, save for one ballad sung by martin, halfway through the concert.

on the dvd, which was recorded in paris, the ballad that martin sang was one that i wasn’t lucky enough to see in any of the four concerts i attended. as i sat in my lounge, with the lights dimmed and the shades drawn, singing along at the top of my lungs, i realized just how eerily applicable the lyrics of it doesn’t matter [two] are, to my situation with irish brian… a reinstated love affair, a painful reunion, a confusing crossroads… that can’t easily go anywhere…

as i lay here with you
the shame lies with us
we talk of love and trust
that doesn’t matter

though we may be
the last in the world
we feel like pioneers
telling hopes and fears
to one another

and oh what a feeling
inside of me
it might last for an hour
wounds aren’t healing
inside of me
though it feel good now
i know it’s only for now

the feeling is intense
you grip me with your eyes
and then i realise
it doesn’t matter
it doesn’t matter [two]
depeche mode
8 years, 4 months ago
51 Comments
tags: , , ,

guestlist bitch

last weekend i had the pleasure of entertaining two lovely visitors… first there was christopher, who is deliciously artistic and witty and intelligent and still sexy after all these years, generally from san diego but recently setting up shop in paris. christopher and i have met up at various spots around the globe over the past few years, and after each rendezvous i find myself smitten with him all over again.

my second visitor was torsten, whom i met through the blogosphere a few years ago, and whom always makes me smile with his german antics. although i’ve been in england now for nearly four years, i still haven’t made any trips to germany, where i have a smattering of friends from when i lived there as an exchange student in my teens. it’s the same flavor of guilt that causes you to wait weeks and weeks to respond to an email, because you want to give it a proper response.

the weekend was typically over-the-top insane, this time i at least had the excuse of trying to impress and entertain two hotties. saturday night we frolicked at the cock live christmas special. the cock is a friday night electro club, the cock live is their occasional saturday night live electro club, and this was their yearly christmas bash. it was interesting and entertaining, even if we spent most of the evening dancing to to madonna in the ~`other’~ room.

at 5am or so, we crawled over to .beyond, where i had my most unfortunate studio 54-style guestlist experience. there’s easily a few hundred people in each of the different queues, so .greg swans to the front of the guestlist queue, drops a few names, and presumably gets us all in. he goes in, but i hestitate and am now stuck at the front of the guestlist queue.

a half hour goes by, and i get in, but turn around to see that christopher and torsten are still stuck at the front of the guestlist queue. for the next 45 minutes, the guestlist clipboard-wielding nazi completely ignores just about everyone, and the guestlist and ticket-holding queue are motionless, and i’m in some bizarre no-man’s land between the queues and the entrance. every 10 minutes or so i try to [pleasantly and politely] get his attention but he’s having a great time ignoring everyone in the wind-off-the-river early morning freezing cold.

punters are coming up to him with tickets, he looks them in the eye, and says i don’t care. people come up to him, saying my boyfriend is the deejay or i know the promoters, he says i don’t care. people are coming up with bribes of Ł20 or Ł40, he says i don’t care. i show him my membership card, explain to him how i’ve been waiting in no-man’s land for 45 minutes now, and that my friends are right over there can they come in now.

i don’t care is his response, naturally.

i then have the brilliant idea of passing my membership card back to the boys, which they can then use to come in [i'm already okay since i've made it past the queues]. i smoothly pass the card back to them, but it gets intercepted by some random 18yo chinese straight kids, who confusingly look at it and successfully use it to get past the bouncers. they then come up to me, hand my card back to me and say thank you thank you thank you

the bouncers see this, all circle around me and start yelling at me. it’s 6am at this point, i’m frozen to the bone, my friends are still stuck at the front of the queue, and .greg is inside on his own bored out of his mind. we chuck in the towel and crawl home in defeat.

i thought i was a rockstar. hrmph.

8 years, 5 months ago
104 Comments
tags: , , , , ,

it’s gettin’, it’s gettin’,


it’s gettin’ kinda hectic

flabbergasted.

absolutely flabbergasted.

not in an exhausted sense, but more of just a brain overload sense. like a oh my gawd i wish i had a camera crew or at least a notepad because this is just ridiculously complex sense. complicated. internally.

went out friday with mitch to .popstarz. ran into about 193 boys i was trying to pull, plus the loverly olly that i recently befriended and whom periodically kicks my ass. then the lovely boy-i’ve-been-dating-but-we’re-not-boyfriends ben happens to show up, and i do the right* thing and go home with him, rather than drunkenly pull some rent boy or world champion model airplane flier or little goth boy as per usual.

saturday and sunday i stay in [shock horror awe] for the first time since i was about 7 years old. food is eaten, sleep is had, and my body rejoices.

which leaves me itching for more on a monday.

the loverly olly who obviously loves me and hates me, convinces me to join him for a date. a date whilst i’m dating someone else. a date whilst he reads my blog. a date whilst he’s very well aware of what a bizarre person i am. a date whilst he knows that he and i are two very opposite not-similar people.

fun dinner [at balans how predictable] and then drinks [at friendly how predictable, hi scott, hi maria] and then to .heaven [how woefully, woefully predictable].

you can see where this is going…

romance sure and flirtation yeah and getting-to-know-each-other uh-huh but yet i find myself wandering. i can’t shut it off, i can’t batton down the hatches, i can’t hit the mute button on my mojo.

olly spends a bit too long flirting with the deejay and i find myself drawn away from the cheesy pop to something more… hardcore you know the score.

shake booties with marcos from big brother who seems lovely in the sense that he keeps it real and doesn’t pretend that he’s a bonafide celebrity.

i run into gene who’s all over me like hoop earrings on girls aloud, i’m moshing with a straight** ginger lad, i have the luxury of slam dancing with a large-breasted girl to linkin park and eminem as if i’m 10 years younger and have an xbox but my mom still has to drive me to the mall so i can hang out in borders.

i see that random boy who fancies me and who i fancy right back yet whom i made cry because i lost his phone number. he’s with an older man who is definitely his [sugar] daddy.

i see that lovely muscleboy brazillian bartender [gee that narrows it down] who invited me to go to paris with him on 4 hours notice and now refuses to serve me. but smiles vacantly regardless.

i see that ex that looks entirely too much like kurt cobain. he still looks entirely too much like kurt cobain.

i see that cute half-chinese boy named dewey or decimal or something, who my college pal fred brought to my flatwarming party months ago. for 3 minutes we have a very serious discussion about our lovely shy friend fred and then i find myself flirting with his date [again] so i flee.

i escape to the main floor, where it’s chockablock straight boys and 40yo chinese freaks with their eyes rolling back into their heads and hairy fresh-outta-the-hostel tourists screaming way-hey to every italodisco anthem and i can’t stomach it.

my only saving grace is the underpaid cloakroom boy in the vip with whom i have a 2-minute long philosophical discussion about the merits of going out at all gee whiz he must be having fun listening to freaks like me.

then 15 minutes of waiting for the bus, fending off the minicab minicab minicab drivers and the random alllllllllllmost attractive blokes trying to cruise me.

thinking, of couse, in a drunken stupor but well aware of the fact that i’m in a drunken stupor how lovely it would be to not jump through these hoops and maybe, for once, invest some effort in a relationship.

* right because it’s the proper thing to do and i’m absolutely smitten by him yet i feel the need to go out and try to ruin everything.

** by straight i mean gay but dressed like a city-boy-straight-lad

8 years, 6 months ago
49 Comments
tags: , ,

too perfect

always pray before sushi

after being confined to my home with the plague all week, i needed to bust out and do some social-a-mizin’. met atif and his delicious irish flatmate carrianne at the suddenly-it’s-really-cool-again sahara nights. the music was astonishingly ear-shattering, a good mix of current house and retro house and even some old school garage and some ibiza holidaymaker/northern wedding reception chunes. and there were gaggles of electrorawk gay boys and hags there, excited about goldfrapp performing next door at .popstarz.

there was a teency queue at the door, and these annoying men were at the front handing out flyers and asking questions. they were dressed in these like rainbow jumpsuits, with faux military badges which read jesus army and christ loves you!. i respect their mission, but not their methods. once i got inside, nic came out and shooed them away. check their website for mp3s! music videos! or to join the j generation! they have some naughty theme song called deeper in, higher up—sounds like a song about sex in the toilets at .beyond?

right, so .popstarz was filled to the poppers-scented rafters with the usual crowd plus tons of annoying straight electro freaks who were there to see allison goldfrapp do her 4-song set. landmines were everywhere, and my peripheral vision, gut instincts and finely-tuned gaydar were on overdrive, trying to navigate me through the crowds, avoiding all of those boys that i need to avoid for whatever reason.

when i look back upon my life
it’s always with a sense of shame
i’ve always been the one to blame

we hankered down right in front of the stage, and in retrospect it wasn’t worth being stepped on by angry dykes, repeatedly poked in the ribs by drunken straight girls, and having alcopops spilled on me by druken students for the hour or so we had to wait. goldfrapp came out and played their four songs: utopia, an apparently revamped strict machine, black cherry [i think?] and train as an encore. they started the drum machines on the wrong track, and allison had a hissy fit. her montior wasn’t loud enough, so she had a hissy fit. the crowd was too loud, she had a hissy fit. her performance was perfect, and a great p.a., but her diva-like antics kinda ruined the fun vibe for me. although, during train she was gazing right into my eyes throughout, cocking her head a bit and sorta smiling, mainly cuz i accidentally started flirting with her and i was about a foot taller than all the short girls around me. i accidentally filrted with several girlies last night, natch.

just before the peformance though, i took carrianne to the upstairs toilets, which involved crossing the packed main dancefloor, up a staircase, weaving our way through the packed middle beat bar, to the women’s toilets, and then all the way back. during the performance, i realized i had bumped into jack at some point in that crazy journey. my landmine-dectection routines prevented me from actually making eye contact, but in retrospect i knew it was him.

for everything i long to do
no matter when or where or who
has one thing in common, too

jack is the lovely, handsome, sexy, smart, witty, cultured, posh, caring doctor/med student i had dated in november/december last year. things ended stupidly in january, when he didn’t really call me on new years… he said he would be at home in wales with his family, but was actually in paris doing some modelling with some model friends. oh, and then there was that time when he caught me out on a date with ukulele boy.

although i’ve been harboring a fair amount of regret/guilt, when i tracked down jack later that evening, he smoothed everything over so perfectly. he accepted my apology, but didn’t place blame. he’d become even more fit than the last time i’d seen him, and was as cheerful and dashing and handsome and smiley as ever. he has this amazing knack of remembering every detail of everything you ever tell him, and you really get the feeling that he wants nothing more than to hear about every aspect of your life.

it’s a sin

someone to take home to mother. someone whose company i enjoy. someone unlike all the others. someone all of my friends adore. too good to be true. too sweet, too nice, too good in bed, too intelligent, too well-mannered, too friendly, too caring. too perfect for me, right now.

9 years ago
59 Comments
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